


Shapes No Longer There

by heartstone



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Angst, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-04
Updated: 2017-09-04
Packaged: 2018-12-24 00:31:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12001179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartstone/pseuds/heartstone
Summary: He comes to his senses decades later. Not all at once, but only slowly his mind is wafted of its fogginess as grains of sand slip by in an hour glass. Bleakly he wakes up from his fever-dream, a nightmare that is real and substantial, that he feels every day with each raw and broken inhale and each studdering exhale through his teeth. His hands shake at the thought of before, so he does not think, but instead he only does.***A look at Mairon and his many names in the years after Melkor is gone.





	Shapes No Longer There

Obsession

(Poem by Charles Baudelaire)

***

Your forests, like cathedrals, are my dread:

You roar like organs. Our curst hearts, like cells

Where death forever rattles on the bed,

Echo your _de Profundis_ as it swells.

 

My spirit hates you, Ocean! sees, and loathes

Its tumults in your own. Of men defeated

The bitter laugh, that’s full of sobs and oaths,

Is in your own tremendously repeated.

 

How you would please me, Night! without your stars

Which speak a foreign dialect, that jars

On one who seeks the void, the black, the bare.

 

Yet even your darkest shade a canvas forms

Whereon my eye must multiply in swarms

Familiar looks of shapes no longer there.

***

I.

He comes to his senses decades later. Not all at once, but only slowly his mind is wafted of its fogginess as grains of sand slip by in an hour glass. Bleakly he wakes up from his fever-dream, a nightmare that is real and substantial, that he feels every day with each raw and broken inhale and each studdering exhale through his teeth. His hands shake at the thought of _before,_ so he does not think, but instead he only _does._  

Sometimes he doesn't even remember what it is he accomplished in those days, the months, the years that drift away from him, distant and blurry like things unfocused in a heavy haze. But he is stronger now, his body growing carbon by carbon each molecule easing into the other. His spirit is welded at the joints in a broken forge, limping as it chases the subtle music that surrounds him, that whispers and comforts but is an echo. 

Something missing, something vital removed. The feeling of the ghost-limb of his soul reaching out and searching. So he does the things that are natural to him, things instinctive to his anguished Fëa. He orders and he commands, and the crippled Empire slowly revives, forgotten in the depths of Arda. He latches on to each strumming note he hears, each small peep of Discord and he sings along with it alone and snaps it back into place like the flesh of his face, the marrow in his bones. 

 _Perfection._ That is his name. And he sought to find all that he could of _Him,_ every little bit left on the earth to bring the notes together, to stitch them like ragged patches of fabric until the patterns form a quilt of Discord. ‘ _Perfection,’_ he whispers to himself, ‘ _To restore.’_

II.

He catches a glimpse of his Fána one day as he departs for Eregion. His mind is clear and he thinks only of bringing Him back. The Discord sings within him and there it is ordered in his breast the sound of a world in its zenith. He had not seen himself in ages, and when he looks it is not himself he sees. 

The flesh is as cool as fallen snow, that holds within its paleness tones of azure nebula, pearl and magma cooling into quartz and pale plum, the fine hair that is the blackness of the pitch Void, that is obsidian and the raven-dark sheen of amethyst and lapis lazuli. Even his eyes seem to be a memento, icy blue in memory of blindness, blindness that came from the Light that shines in the faces of these Elves. 

But this beauty he sees reflected in the water is disjointed, and the waves reflect his inner torment as they fracture His image in the water’s surface. For this is the beauty of _Him,_ He whom he aches for, who is absent, who carried with His being everything he lived for. Faded and worn, the image is a phoney, the beauty too delicate: the straight, striking nose is too slanted, His eyes are heavily creased and dull, lashes too short a splay, mouth too full and feminine, chin pointed rather than strong and squared, and ears- much too upturned, the shape is of a leaf than flat and orcish. 

 _It is all wrong,_ but he stops and stares at that figure he unconsciously shifted to, and he reaches out to touch it but finds it only makes Him distort more as the water meets his hand that is not His hand, a hand that is too slim and shaky to be His- even the small lines etched into His palm are in all the wrong spots. 

And all of Eregion holds its breath when he speaks his name, thinks not that it is the softened face of the Dark Foe, for already they have forgotten. The wind stops blowing and all is still. _‘Annatar,’_ he says, _‘Lord of Gifts.’_ But names mean little anymore, they are a façade just like his form, they are another prison to the true nature of his golden Fëa, from the beauty that once was his Master’s, the beauty of understanding the Void, beauty that is irreplaceable. 

For someday, even the stars will fade, and Eä will be left as nothing but a rumor in the cosmos, star-dust spread thin in endless black space. But it is so easy, he thinks, for the Eruhíni to look up at the spread of stars in the nighttime, to look up and feel small and whisper of eternity, even when the source of such light has died millennium ago or has been hidden away in the Timeless Halls, a spectator in an amusing cosmic play rather than the warm fire of a Father. 

Such is how it was too easy for him to be trusted, for them to look upon him like the stars and whisper of eternity. The Elves fawn over his godly form, that which is a painting of a painting, a copy of Might Arising that is unable to be copied, paradoxical in its beauty. The pain of this knowledge is in his eyes, that they should praise that which they destroyed, unable to recognize it for what it was: _entropy, the inevitable darkness which all will face. The beauty of Melkor._

In time, Annatar grows to hate them more when they praise him, base creatures lacking any thought. When he seduces them to gain their trust, when they follow him like pups and merely skim the surface of his arcane thought- he wants to tear them to dripping crimson shreds. When they whisper his praises in their wavering, reverent voices, the voices that do not come from their soul but from cords that will decay into rotting soil, he wants to dash their skulls with his bare hands against the rocks, for they do not see him, or _Him,_ yet they perceive the Discord and its beauty but run from it when revealed to the world.

Never did Melkor, the First of All Things, Lord of All and Giver of Freedom leave Arda, for He lived on for a time in the flesh as Annatar. But all things of Eä fade, and Annatar could not bear to mimic Melkor for long. For he is _Mayazônôz the Admirable,_ and within him, Melkor lives on now in voice only.

III.

And so he cannot bear the Elves any longer and he returns to Mordor and he looks again at himself, in a mirror, reflecting the Fána that is a memory of Melkor’s Fána. He can sometimes fool himself, even, that it is not himself he looks at, and salt streams his face as he shifts forms. But in truth, it never was Melkor, merely a pathetic mimicry. Yet even he can pretend- just as the Elves pretended the Rings could stop them from dwindling in the years of Men. 

And so he stands, naked in the mirror, and he touches his body and caresses his cheek that is now wholly his; tanned and freckled, and he can hear the memory of a name he hasn’t been called in centuries, can feel the Discord arise around him in all things; in the very atoms of Arda. He is in his natural form, the form of fire, the flames that are slowly starving, the light that is golden and both creates and destroys: the Secret Flame, Imperishable but twilight.

 _‘Mayazônôz,’_ the Ring whispers, static, as if from words spoken long ago. _‘Mayazônôz, thou art most beautiful to me, most beautiful in all of creation. Thou art my Precious.’_

IV.

And he is wholly Mairon now, _Tar-Mairon: King Excellent_ , and he closes his eyes and they are the Lidless Eyes, and his hair is the colour of Elf-blood, skin no longer ivory tusk but rich like Arda in its utmost long ago, and he loathes himself and does not shift into Melkor’s shape any longer, no matter his yearning. 

Instead he seduces the Humans now, and he is bound in chains of gold by Ar-Pharazôn, he who is named the Golden One but is overshadowed by Mairon’s golden soul. The Edain worship him, and they listen to his poisonous words, and they listen and worship the Void. And Pharazôn is a fool and is easily controlled by his grace, his praise and the beauty of his original form, whored to such worthless, pathetic beings. 

A statue of Melkor stands tall and proud in the centre of the empty chamber afore the altar. Blood stains the floor black and Tar-Mairon turns and runs his trembling hands along the polished marble of Him that he crafted, that which he strokes the clasped stone hands with the pads of his fingers as if soothing the pain of burns, moving up to gently cup the face of Him, chiseled and ancient, lovingly worked. His eyes are closed and fingers trace scars as they dip over the planes of a regal face, and an iron crown is on His head, and Tar-Mairon falls to his knees in a collapsing of gold and silk. The Discord that is quieting with every year gone by falters on the High Priest’s lips in a hum and he tells himself that the stone contains the warmth of flesh, that the eyes will open and that the lips are in that disarming, charming smile that He always gave when He thought he wasn’t looking. 

He sacrifices another worthless Númanórean soul to the effigy of his Master. The incense fills his lungs and he hopes that somewhere in the Void He knows he is still fighting for Him, even when he laughs until the water overtakes him. 

V.

It is difficult to take any form now, and hair and teeth and nails and skin sloughs from his body until his Fëa is visible as a dying flame from the decaying cracks of his mortal form. He is called _Sauron_ now- _the Abhorred-_ and the name Mairon is no longer remembered and even he has to remind himself with the Ring.

But the weight of gold on his hand does not remember Mairon either, and instead it calls him a name with such fondness in the voice of the Void, in the voice of rolling thunder, the rumbling of an earthquake, the growing of a mountain and all the glory of the earth. The Ring is his promise and his comfort, a memory of a joining of soul and flesh, and they both only remember the name ‘ _My Precious,’_ and he almost feels whole again instead of sickly grey like the distant celestial bodies on the border of Eä and the Void. 

So when the Ring is taken from him, he burns red in fury, but it cannot be sustained for long- like a large sun, bright and hot but short-lived. It is His voice he needs to hear, to comfort, the voice in the Ring, that voice that reminds him. In Barad-dûr his Fána is failing and his eye is blinded, and he is tired, _so tired._ But whether he wins or loses he knows his destiny- for if he wins, Gondor will fall and he will rip his Master from the Void: and if he loses, he will join Him. 

But only is there a single thought, undying, and he whispers it as Frodo climbs Mount Doom: 

_\-- Belekôrôz, Belekôrôz, Belekôrôz, Belekôrôz, Belekôrôz, Belekôrôz, Belekôrôz, Belekôrôz, Belekôrôz, Belekôrôz, Belekôrôz, Belekôrôz, Belekôrôz, Belekôrôz, Belekôrôz, Belekôrôz, Belekôrôz, Belekôrôz --_

He whispers it over and over and over, his lament, his identity, his Theme. Sacrosanct, a benediction. 

When the last remnant of his power falls into the subterranean fire that once paled in comparison to his soul, that once would have been tamed under pale fingers entwined with copper. And when the One Ring melts and his tower falls, he is only thankful: for all the world will die in the end, and all will return at last to the womb of the Void, and the only thought on his mind is _Belekôrôz,_ and a smile on his full lips, for he has forgotten all save this.

VI.

He laughs at the Valar who thinks it is punishment, his mournful cackle is strained and hoarse, a whistling of wind. Mairon is overcome with joy to return to the arms of his Beloved, for there lies within that voice, those hands, those lips which are _real,_ which will give him something for his Fëa to burn for, to live all eternity whole and complete.  

 _“Mayazônôz”_ the voice trembles, for that voice too, has forgotten all save a single name. And in the Void they remember. And in the Void they forget. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> What started this is the idea that Mairon took a form similar to Melkor's form when he was in Eregion. I'm still not sure if it fits his character to do such a thing, but I thought it too interesting an idea to not write about.  
> The Valarin names (Mayazônôz for Mairon and Belekôrôz for Melkor) I found on a tumblr called Valarin Ventures, so credit for that goes to them!  
> As a side note, Charles Baudelaire's "Les Fleurs du Mal" is perfect for these two I can't stop using his poems.  
> I'd love to hear what you think!  
> ***


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